WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED THIS WEEK?

MATH:  We have been focused on math facts this week, using math vocabulary for multiplication and division.  We learned multiples, factors, factor pairs, and products for multiplication.  We also dived into division with dividends, divisors, quotients, and remainders.  Ask your students about “DQ”! We had an awesome math morning today, with students learning how to take notes in their math notebooks.  We decided that some students need number examples to help them with definitions in math, some need word definitions, and some need both number examples and words.  It was really exciting to listen to them talk math and make the decision about how they learn, which determined how they took notes.  This is something that we’ll be doing on a regular basis.  It is important for them to understand note taking, and that their notes need to reflect their learning.  Considering that it’s been a long week of MEAP work, I was overjoyed with their enthusiasm to do math! 

READING:  We have not switched reading groups this week due to the MEAP schedule.  However, the students have been reading everyday as they finish the test.  Again, I am constantly surprised by our kids’ self-motivation.  They are reading all types of genres, from poetry to non-fiction about animals, marine life, space, to all forms of fiction.  It’s a teacher’s dream to have students exploring reading, and not getting enough of it!!  I hope that you are seeing this at home, too.  Keep encouraging them to read at least 20 minutes a day.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:  We are finished with our first science unit, which covered the moon, sun, and the earth. In two weeks we will start our social studies unit.  In our first unit we will learn how to be historians from primary and secondary sources.  Our learning will focus on Michigan history.

WRITING: We are continuing our writing of narrative paragraphs.  Students have learned what makes a strong topic sentence, and how to support that sentence with details and examples.  They are also working on editing skills, looking for capitals, punctuation, spelling, and language errors. They have learned about the 4 types of sentences, subject, predicate, direct object, and prepositional phrases.